“Until lawmakers end the catch-and-release policies of the Obama
administration,” said Jessica Vaughan of the Center for Immigration
Studies, “any infrastructure improvements, new strategies, and better
metrics are pointless.”

Tuesday, November 23, 2010

YOU WANTED TO TELL YOURSELF THAT ILLEGALS WERE NOT VOTING???? STOP AND SMELL THE TACO TRUCK! THIS IS A NATION UNDER VOLUNTARY OCCUPATION BY MEXICO!JOBS GO TO ILLEGALS FIRST, ALONG WITH WELFARE AND LA RAZA MEXICAN SUPREMACY!*MEXICANOCCUPATION.blogpsot.comREALITIES ON THE MEXICAN INVASION, OCCUPATION and EVER EXPANDING MEX WELFARE STATE…. It’s all about HISPANDERING for the ILLEGALS’ VOTES!

*“On Thursday, the House Republican leader, Representative John A. Boehner of Ohio, flatly predicted that Congress would not send an immigration measure to the president this year. Mr. Boehner accused Democrats of engaging in a “cynical ploy to try to engage voters, some segment of voters, to show up in this November’s elections.” *APPARENTLY AMERICANS WOULD WISH TO BELIEVE AT LEAST THE LA RAZA DEMS ARE PROTECTING OUR VOTING FROM THE TAKEOVER BY ILLEGALS, EVEN AS ILLEGALS BREAK ANY AND ALL LAWS IN THE NATION. THAT ISN’T THE CASE. THE LA RAZA DEMS, OBAMA, CLINTON, FEINSTEIN, PELOSI, REID, BOXER… ANY LIFER POL, CAN’T HISPANDER ENOUGH! PELOSI, BOXER, FEINSTEIN HAVE SPENT THEIR ENTIRE POLITICAL LIFE GETTING RICH OFF ELECTED OFFICE, AND SABOTAGING CALIFORNIA FOR THEIR CORPORATE PAYMASTERS, OR DEALMAKERS THAT PUT THE BIG BUCKS IN THEIR HUSBANDS’ POCKETS. THEY HAVE WORKED TIRELESSLY TO EXPAND THE MEX INVASION, WELFARE STATE IN AND ILLEGALS IN OUR JOBS TO KEEP WAGES DEPRESSED AND THEIR PAYMASTERS EVEN MORE GENEROUS!

THERE ARE ONLY EIGHT STATES WITH A POPULATION GREATER THAN LOS ANGELES COUNTY WHERE 47% OF THOSE WITH A JOB ARE ILLEGALS USING STOLEN SOCIAL SECURITY NUMBERS.. HOW MANY LAW BREAKERS IS THAT? HEARD OF EVEN ONE BEING BUSTED?BOTH FEINSTEIN AND PELOSI HAVE LONG HIRED ILLEGALS. PELOSI AT HER ST. HELENA, NAPA WINERY, AND FEINSTEIN AT HER S.F. HOTEL. THEY BOTH VOTE REPEATEDLY TO SABOTAGE E-VERIFY, AND FOR EVEN WIDER OPEN BORDERS EVEN AS UNEMPLOYMENT FOR LEGALS IS NOW BEYOND STAGGERING! THESE CORRUPT WOMEN DON’T GIVE A FUCK ABOUT ANYTHING BUT THE AMOUNT OF BACKROOM LOOT THEY CAN TUCK AWAY!

FROM NEW YORK TIMES, MOUTHPIECE FOR LA RAZA AND 10% OWNED BY MEX BILLIONAIRE CARLOS SLIM:*November 22, 2010The Power of the Hispanic VoterDemocrats were hurt in the midterm election by low turnouts or faltering support from voters who were young, black or female. But overwhelming support from Hispanic voters appears to have helped elect Democratic senators in Nevada, California, Colorado and possibly Washington State. Hispanic voters may have kept the Senate in Democratic hands. Several Hispanic Republicans were also elected, including two governors, Brian Sandoval of Nevada and Susana Martinez of New Mexico, and a senator, Marco Rubio of Florida. But, over all, Hispanics voted at a rate of 2 to 1 for Democrats, according to several polls, and many were stirred to action by viciously anti-immigrant ads or comments made by Republican candidates. Eligible Hispanic voters represent about 9 percent of the national electorate, a slight increase over previous years, but the percentages are much higher in the West, climbing to 22 percent in California. They are less predictably partisan than other ethnic groups and the two major parties have long contested for their votes. Early polls had suggested that many were disappointed in both parties for failing to act on immigration reform, and it appeared that they might sit out the midterms. Then came a series of ads by Republican candidates like Sharron Angle, who was running for the United States Senate in Nevada. One of hers depicted Hispanics sneaking over the border, carrying weapons and appearing in police mug shots. Tom Tancredo, whose anti-immigrant sentiment was already known, ran for governor of Colorado by telling workers that their jobs were threatened by illegal immigration. Meg Whitman, the Republican candidate for governor of California, pandered to the same sentiment by saying her former housekeeper, an illegal immigrant, should have been deported. Now Hispanic political activists had galvanizing issues. Groups like Mi Familia Vota, La Raza and Lulac spent the last weeks of the campaign organizing voters against these diatribes. A tracking poll conducted by Latino Decisions, a polling organization, found that the number of very enthusiastic Hispanic voters shot up to 58 percent on Oct. 25 from 40 percent a month earlier. As the Hispanic electorate continues to grow faster than the overall population in the years ahead, the 2010 election should be a useful lesson. Anti-immigrant demagoguery occasionally works, as it did in a number of Republican victories in Arizona this year. But more often it will produce an angry reaction among a growing group of committed voters. *MEXICANOCCUPATION.blogspot.com

*“PUNISH OUR ENEMIES”… does that mean assault the legals of Arizona that must fend off the Mexican invasion, occupation, growing criminal and welfare state, as well as Mex Drug cartels???

OBAMA TELLS ILLEGALS “PUNISH OUR ENEMIES”Friends of ALIPAC,

Each day new reports come in from across the nation that our movement is surging and more incumbents, mostly Democrats, are about to fall on Election Day. Obama's approval ratings are falling to new lows as he makes highly inappropriate statements to Spanish language audiences asking illegal alien supporters to help him "punish our enemies."

*

The fastest growing political party in America is NOT the tea baggers! It is the Mexican Fascist Party of LA RAZA… “The Race”. .. The House now as 90 members, nearly one-quarter, that are CONGRESSIONAL HISPANIC CAUCUS pushing for AMNESTY, no e-verify, expanded sanctuary cities, open borders, and illegals voting!

LaRaza Calls For Boycott Against Free Speech________________________________________No surprise here. Pulling the race/hate card again and using political correctness La Raza goes after cable shows reporting on illegal immigration.

"Murguía said she recognized that ultimately the power to change the debate lies with the Hispanic community itself. “Latinos buy products from the advertisers supporting these programs,” she said. “Latinos vote in primaries and in the general election. We have a significant role to play picking winners and losers in both arenas. We need to make it clear to those who embrace hate that they do so at their own economic and political peril.”

http://www.nclr.org/content/news/detail/50375/

*HARRY REID PUTS MONEY IN LA RAZA’S DIRTY HANDS!25% OF THE POPULATION OF REID’S STATE ARE ILLEGALS. *New Stealth Federal Funding Bill for La RazaWhich brings us to an extraordinary matter of some urgency. Several weeks before the White House and its Senate allies announced their big "breakthrough" legislation (S.1348), radicals in the House quietly introduced legislation to pump $5 million directly into La Raza next year — and $10 million per year for "each fiscal year thereafter."*"This country belongs to Mexico" is said by the Mexican Militant. This is a common teaching that the U.S. is really AZTLAN, belonging to Mexicans, which is taught to Mexican kids in Arizona and California through a LA Raza educational program funded by American Tax Payers via President Obama, when he gave LA RAZA $800,000.00 in March of 2009!H. R. 1999, entitled the Hope Fund Act of 2007, should truthfully be labeled the "Perpetual Funding of La Raza Radicals Act." *“Through love of having children, we are going to take over.” AUGUSTIN CEBADA, BROWN BERETS, THE LA RAZA FASCIST PARTY

*

The National Council of La Raza (NCLR) is not only one of the wealthiest and most politically powerful militant organizations in the country, it is also notoriously racist and subversive. The group's name, "La Raza," means "The Race," by which they are referring to ethnic Mexicans, or more broadly to "hispanics" or "latinos." And it is quite clear from their decades of vitriolic rhetoric — both spoken and written — that the La Raza activists are trying to engender not only race consciousness amongst hispanic U.S. citizens and Mexican migrants, but also racial militancy and animosity toward "Gringo America."The NCLR grew out of the La Raza Unida (The Race United) Party and the Southwest Council of La Raza in the late 1960s and early 1970s. The key leaders were Marxist-Leninist followers of Fidel Castro and Che Guevarra.*MAYOR ANTONIO “TACO RUNT” VILLARAIGOSA OF LOS ANGELES IS A LONG STANDING MEMBER OF THE MEX FASCIST PARTY OF M.E.Ch.A. IN LOS ANGELES, 47% OF THOSE WITH A JOB ARE ILLEGALS USING STOLEN SSI. THE COUNTY PAYS OUT $600 MILLION IN WELFARE TO ILLEGALS!!! THE CHRISTIAN SCIENCE MONITOR CHARACTERIZES LOS ANGELES AS THE MEX GANG CAPITAL OF AMERICA!

The radical student group MEChA (Moviemento Estudiantil Chicano de Aztlan), with which NCLR has been closely allied for several decades, is even more explicitly and militantly, having adopted the slogan, "Por La Raza Todo, Fuera de La Raza Nada," which translated means: "For the Race, Everything; Outside the Race, Nothing."MEChA's founding documents and literature are replete with appeals to "La Raza de Bronce" (The Bronze Race) and condemnation of the "brutal gringo." MEChA, as its name suggests, is also a leading promoter of the radical "reconquista" (reconquest) movement, a plan of to take over the states of California, Arizona, New Mexico, Colorado, and Texas — a region they refer to as "Aztlan" — which they claim was stolen from the "Aztecan" peoples. NCLR provides major financial support to MEChA and many of NCLR's leaders were MEChA leaders in their college days. *FIFTEEN THINGS YOU SHOULD KNOW ABOUT LA RAZA “THE RACE”by Michelle Malkin (get Malkin’s book on OBAMA NOTED below!)Only in America could critics of a group called "The Race" be labeled racists. Such is the triumph of left-wing identity chauvinists, whose aggressive activists and supine abettors have succeeded in redefining all opposition as "hate." Both Barack Obama and John McCain will speak this week in San Diego at the annual conference of the National Council of La Raza, the Latino organization whose name is Spanish for, yes, "The Race." Can you imagine Obama and McCain paying homage to a group of white people who called themselves that? No matter. The presidential candidates and the media have legitimized "The Race" as a mainstream ethnic lobbying group and marginalized its critics as intolerant bigots. The unvarnished truth is that the group is a radical ethnic nationalist outfit that abuses your tax dollars and milks PC politics to undermine our sovereignty. *Here are 15 things you should know about "The Race": *15. "The Race" supports driver's licenses for illegal aliens. *14."The Race" demands in-state tuition discounts for illegal alien students that are not available to law-abiding U.S. citizens and law-abiding legal immigrants. *13. "The Race" vehemently opposes cooperative immigration enforcement efforts between local, state and federal authorities. *12. "The Race" opposes a secure fence on the southern border. *11. "The Race" joined the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee in a failed lawsuit attempt to prevent the feds from entering immigration information into a key national crime database -- and to prevent local police officers from accessing the data. *10. "The Race" opposed the state of Oklahoma's tough immigration-enforcement-first laws, which cut off welfare to illegal aliens, put teeth in employer sanctions and strengthened local-federal cooperation and information sharing. *9. "The Race" joined other open-borders, anti-assimilationists and sued to prevent Proposition 227, California's bilingual education reform ballot initiative, from becoming law. *8. "The Race" bitterly protested common-sense voter ID provisions as an "absolute disgrace." *7. "The Race" has consistently opposed post-9/11 national security measures at every turn. *6. Former "Race" president Raul Yzaguirre, Hillary Clinton's Hispanic outreach adviser, said this: "U.S. English is to Hispanics as the Ku Klux Klan is to blacks." He was referring to U.S. English, the nation's oldest, largest citizens' action group dedicated to preserving the unifying role of the English language in the United States. "The Race" also pioneered Orwellian open-borders Newspeak and advised the Mexican government on how to lobby for illegal alien amnesty while avoiding the terms "illegal" and "amnesty." *5. "The Race" gives mainstream cover to a poisonous subset of ideological satellites, led by Movimiento Estudiantil Chicano de Aztlan, or Chicano Student Movement of Aztlan (MEChA). The late GOP Rep. Charlie Norwood rightly characterized the organization as "a radical racist group … one of the most anti-American groups in the country, which has permeated U.S. campuses since the 1960s, and continues its push to carve a racist nation out of the American West." *4. "The Race" is currently leading a smear campaign against staunch immigration enforcement leaders and has called for TV and cable news networks to keep immigration enforcement proponents off the airwaves -- in addition to pushing for Fairness Doctrine policies to shut up their foes. The New York Times reported that current "Race" president Janet Murguia believes "hate speech" should "not be tolerated, even if such censorship were a violation of First Amendment rights." *3. "The Race" sponsors militant ethnic nationalist charter schools subsidized by your public tax dollars (at least $8 million in federal education grants). The schools include Aztlan Academy in Tucson, Ariz., the Mexicayotl Academy in Nogales, Ariz., Academia Cesar Chavez Charter School in St. Paul, Minn., and La Academia Semillas del Pueblo in Los Angeles, whose principal inveighed: "We don't want to drink from a White water fountain, we have our own wells and our natural reservoirs and our way of collecting rain in our aqueducts. We don't need a White water fountain … ultimately the White way, the American way, the neo liberal, capitalist way of life will eventually lead to our own destruction." *2. "The Race" has perfected the art of the PC shakedown at taxpayer expense, pushing relentlessly to lower home loan standards for Hispanic borrowers, reaping millions in federal "mortgage counseling" grants, seeking special multimillion-dollar earmarks and partnering with banks that do business with illegal aliens. *1. "The Race" thrives on ethnic supremacy -- and the elite sheeple's unwillingness to call it what it is. As historian Victor Davis Hanson observes: "[The] organization's very nomenclature 'The National Council of La Raza' is hate speech to the core. Despite all the contortions of the group, Raza (as its Latin cognate suggests) reflects the meaning of 'race' in Spanish, not 'the people' -- and that's precisely why we don't hear of something like 'The National Council of the People,' which would not confer the buzz notion of ethnic, racial and tribal chauvinism." *The fringe is the center. The center is the fringe. Viva La Raza. *LA RAZA – “THE (MEXICAN) RACE”…. THE NATIONAL COUNCIL OF LA RAZA1126 16th Street, N.W. Washington, D.C. 202-785 1670Get on La Raza’s email list to find out what this fascist party is doing to expand the Mexican occupation. NCLR.orgFOR THE EXPANSION OF THE MEXICAN WELFARE STATE, AND MEXICAN SUPREMACYLA RAZA is the virulently racist political party for ILLEGALS (only Mexicans) and the corporations that benefit from illegals, and the employers of illegals. IT IS ILLEGAL TO HIRE AN ILLEGAL. LA RAZA IS THE MEXICAN FASCIST PARTY of AMERICA and has contempt for AMERICANS, AMERICAN LAWS, AMERICAN LANGUAGE, AMERICAN BORDERS, and the AMERICAN FLAG.However LA RAZA does like the AMERICAN WELFARE SYSTEM. The welfare system in the country is so good that Mexico has dumped 38 million of their poor, illiterate , criminal and frequently pregnant over our border.

*“And doing so will reduce taxpayer costs for health care, education, social services and criminal justice. And it could open up the seven million jobs currently held by illegal immigrants for American workers and legal immigrants.” BY REP. LAMAR SMITH – AS OBAMA PELOSI REID WORK FOR AMNESTY AGAIN!

Blocking Illegal ImmigrantsTo the Editor: Re “Immigration Hardball” (editorial, Nov. 15): America has a wonderful tradition of welcoming newcomers. We admit more than one million legal immigrants every year, almost as many as all other countries combined. But immigration policy should put Americans first. Enforcing current immigration laws does just that. Your editorial states that an enforcement-minded approach to preventing illegal immigration “mocks American values,” but the opposite is true. In fact, enforcing the current laws against illegal immigration is consistent with the ultimate American value — the rule of law. And doing so will reduce taxpayer costs for health care, education, social services and criminal justice. And it could open up the seven million jobs currently held by illegal immigrants for American workers and legal immigrants. Paying less in taxes and providing additional jobs for Americans hardly “mocks American values.” Lamar SmithWashington, Nov. 17, 2010 The writer, Republican of Texas, is the ranking member of the House Judiciary Committee. *The danger, as Washington Post economics columnist Robert Samuelson argues, is that of “importing poverty” in the form of a new underclass—a permanent group of working poor.

*

“We could cut unemployment in half simply by reclaiming the jobs taken by illegal workers,” said Representative Lamar Smith of Texas, co-chairman of the Reclaim American Jobs Caucus. “President Obama is on the wrong side of the American people on immigration. The president should support policies that help citizens and legal immigrants find the jobs they need and deserve rather than fail to enforce immigration laws.” *“Obama’s rejection of any serious jobs program is part of a conscious class war policy. Two years after the financial crisis and the multi-trillion dollar bailout of the banks, the administration is spearheading a campaign by corporations to sharply increase the exploitation of the working class, using the “new normal” of mass unemployment to force workers to accept lower wages, longer hours, and more brutal working conditions.” WSWS.ORG

*JOBS AND ILLEGALS – THERE ARE ONLY EIGHT (8) STATES WITH A LARGER POPULATION THAN LOS ANGELES COUNTY WHERE 47% OF THOSE WITH A JOB ARE ILLEGALS USING STOLEN SOCIAL SECURITY NUMBERS!

*CHRISTIAN SCIENCE MONITORWhy the new jobs go to immigrantsBy David R. Francis Wall Street cheered and stock prices rose when the US Labor Department announced last Friday that employers had expanded their payrolls by 262,000 positions in February. But it wasn't entirely good news. The statisticians also indicated that the share of the adult population holding jobs had slipped slightly from January to 62.3 percent. That's now two full percentage points below the level in the brief recession that began in March 2001.Why the apparent contradiction? Reasons abound: population growth, rising retirements. But one factor that gets little attention is immigration.In the past four years, the number of immigrants into the US, legal and illegal, has closely matched the number of new jobs. That suggests newcomers have, in effect, snapped up all of the new jobs."There has been no net job gain for natives," says Andrew Sum, an economist at Northeastern University.In the US, President Bush calls for giving millions of illegal immigrants a kind of guest-worker status as a legal path to US citizenship. So far, no specific legislation to implement his suggestion has been put before Congress.Meanwhile, US border patrols spend millions of dollars a year trying to keep illegals out. And yet, they keep coming, evidently little discouraged by recession or the 9/11 attacks. In the past four years alone, the number of immigrants ran some 2.5 million to 3 million, of which about half were illegal.They come for jobs, of course. And the Bush administration makes barely any effort to enforce current law. In 2003, a total of 13 employers were fined for hiring undocumented employees.In fact, neither Republicans nor Democrats have promoted enforcement of immigration law prohibiting the hiring of illegal immigrants, says Mr. Sum, head of Northeastern's Center for Labor Market Studies.What employers really want in many cases by hiring immigrants is to hold down wage costs, experts say.

ARTICLE:MOST MEXICAN IMMIGRANTS IN NEW STUDY GAVE UP JOBS TO TAKE THEIR CHANCES IN U.S.

By NINA BERNSTEIN New York TimesA report about the work lives of recent Mexican immigrants in seven cities across the United States suggests that they typically traded jobs in Mexico for the prospect of work here, despite serious bouts of unemployment, job instability and poor wages.The report, released Tuesday by the Pew Hispanic Center, was based on surveys of nearly 5,000 Mexicans, most of them here illegally. Those surveyed were seeking identity documents at Mexican consulates in New York, Atlanta and Raleigh, N.C., where recent arrivals have gravitated toward construction, hotel and restaurant jobs, and in Dallas, Chicago, Los Angeles, and Fresno, Calif., where they have been more likely to work in agriculture and manufacturing.Unlike the stereotype of jobless Mexicans heading north, most of the immigrants had been employed in Mexico, the report found. Once in the United States, they soon found that their illegal status was no barrier to being hired here. And though the jobs they landed, typically with help from relatives, were often unstable and their median earnings only $300 a week, that was enough to keep drawing newcomers because wages here far exceeded those in Mexico. "We're getting a peek at a segment of the U.S. labor force that is large, that is growing by illegal migration, and that is bringing an entirely new set of issues into the U.S. labor market," said Rakesh Kochhar, associate director for research at the Pew Hispanic Center and author of the study. The report suggested that policies intended to reduce migration pressures by improving the Mexican economy would have to look beyond employment to wages and perceptions of opportunity. The survey found that the most recent to arrive were more likely to have worked in construction or commerce, rather than agriculture, in Mexico. Only 5 percent had been unemployed there; they were "drawn not from the fringes, but from the heart of Mexico's labor force," the report said. After a difficult transition in their first six months in the United States about 15 percent of the respondents said they did not work during that time the rate of unemployment plummeted, to an average of 5 percent. But in one of the most striking findings, 38 percent reported an unemployment spell lasting a month or more in the previous year, regardless of their location, legal status or length of time in the United States. "These are workers with no safety net," Mr. Kochhar said. "The long run implication is a generation of workers without health or pension benefits, without any meaningful asset accumulation."On the other hand, Mr. Kochhar and Roberto Suro, director of the Pew Hispanic Center, said the flexibility of this work force was a boon to certain industries like home construction, an important part of the nation's economic growth since the last recession. Among respondents to the survey, those who settled in Atlanta and Dallas were the best off, with 56 percent in each city receiving a weekly wage higher than the $300 a week median. The worst off were in Fresno, where more than half of the survey respondents worked in agriculture and 60 percent reported earning less than $300 a week. The lowest wages were reported by women, people who spoke little or no English, and those without identification.

To some scholars of immigration, the report underlines the lack of incentives for employers to turn to a guest worker program like the one proposed by President Bush because their needs are met cheaply by illegal workers and all without paperwork or long term commitment.Guest workers might instead appeal to corporations like Wal Mart, the scholars said, where service jobs are now the target of union organizing drives."You can't plausibly argue that immigrant dominated sectors have a labor shortage," said Robert Courtney Smith, a sociologist and author of "Mexican New York: Transnational Lives of New Immigrants." Instead, he said, the report and evidence of falling wages among Mexican immigrants over time point to an oversupply of vulnerable workers competing with each other.But Brendan Flanagan, a spokesman for the National Restaurant Association, which supports a guest worker program, disagreed. "In many places it is difficult to fill jobs with domestic workers," Mr. Flanagan said. "We've seen a simple lack of applicants, regardless of what wage is offered."Although the survey, conducted from July 2004 to January 2005, was not random or weighted to represent all Mexican immigrants, it offers a close look at a usually elusive population. Those surveyed were not questioned directly about their immigration status, but they were asked whether they had any photo identification issued by a government agency in the United States. Slightly more than half over all, and 75 percent in New York, said they did not.The migration is part of a historic restructuring of the Mexican economy comparable to America's industrial revolution, said Kathleen Newland, director of the Migration Policy Institute, a research organization based in Washington. The institute released its own report on Tuesday, arguing that border enforcement efforts have failed. Workplace enforcement, which has been neglected, would be a crucial part of making a guest worker program successful.For now, Mexicans keep arriving illegally."It doesn't matter if it's winter," said Ricardo Cortes, 23, a construction worker waiting for a friend outside the Mexican consulate in New York on Tuesday. "People are still coming because there's no money over there."

*MEXICANOCCUPATION.blogspot.comHeather Mac Donald: White House doesn't want to enforce immigrationBy: Heather Mac Donald OpEd ContributorAugust 4, 2010 The real motivation for the Justice Department's lawsuit against Arizona's new immigration statute was the only one not mentioned in the department's brief: The Obama administration has no intention of enforcing the immigration laws against the majority of illegal aliens already in the country. It is that policy alone which conflicts with SB 1070: Arizona wants to enforce the law; the Obama administration does not. Reasonable minds can differ on whether that conflict puts Arizona in violation of the Constitution's Supremacy Clause. But what is indisputable is that the failure of the federal government to openly acknowledge the real ground for its opposition to SB 1070 has rendered incoherent not just its own public arguments against the law, but the judicial ruling which largely rubber stamps those arguments as well. The Arizona statute affirms the power of a local police officer or sheriff's deputy to inquire into someone's immigration status, if the officer has reasonable suspicion that the person is in the country illegally, and if doing so is practicable. Under SB 1070, such an inquiry may occur only during a lawful stop to investigate a non-immigration offense. Both the Justice Department and U.S. District Judge Susan Bolton, in striking down most of SB 1070, couched their opposition to the statute exclusively in terms of its effect on legal, as opposed to illegal, aliens. SB 1070, Judge Bolton wrote, would impermissibly burden legal immigrants already in the country by subjecting them to unwarranted immigration checks. There are two problems with this line of argument: First, it ignores the fact that Congress has already anticipated and approved precisely the sort of local immigration inquiries that Judge Bolton now finds unconstitutional. Second, the argument would make all immigration enforcement impossible. In 1996, Congress banned so-called sanctuary policies, by which cities and states prohibit their employees from working with federal immigration authorities regarding illegal aliens. It was in the federal interest, Congress declared, that local and federal authorities cooperate in the "apprehension, detention or removal of [illegal] aliens." In pursuance of that mandate, the federal government operates an immigration clearinghouse, the Law Enforcement Support Center (LESC), to provide just the sort of immigration-status information to local and state law-enforcement officials that SB 1070 seeks. It is therefore absurd to now claim, as Judge Bolton and the Obama Administration do, that such local inquiries conflict with the federal immigration scheme. It is even more absurd to argue that the risk that a legal alien will be questioned about his immigration status makes the alleged conflict unconstitutional. Any immigration enforcement carries the possibility that a legal alien or U.S. citizen will be stopped and questioned. The only way to guarantee that legal aliens are never asked to present their immigration papers is to suspend immigration enforcement entirely. (The same possibility of stopping innocent people for questioning applies to law enforcement generally; that possibility has never been held to invalidate the police investigative power.) If Congress intended to create such a blanket ban on asking legal aliens for proof of legal residency, it could have revoked the 1952 law requiring aliens to carry their certificate of alien registration. Such a requirement makes sense only on the assumption that legal aliens will upon occasion be asked to prove their legal status. Such unpersuasive reasoning suggests that something else is going on. That something is the fact that SB 1070 would have put the Obama administration in the uncomfortable position of repeatedly telling Arizona's law enforcement officers that it is not interested in detaining or deporting the illegal aliens that they have encountered in the course of their duties; the law, in other words, would have exposed the administration's de facto amnesty policy. And SB 1070 would have shown that immigration-law enforcement can work simply by creating a deterrent to illegal entry and presence. Even before it went into operation, the Arizona law was already inducing illegal aliens to leave the state, according to news reports. Illegal aliens are virtually absent from the Justice Department's brief or from Judge Bolton's opinion. Despite this studied avoidance, it's time to have a public debate about how much immigration enforcement this country wants and which enforcement policies--the administration's or Arizona's -- best represent the public will. Heather Mac Donald is a contributing editor of City Journal and co-author of The

Read more at the Washington Examiner: http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/opinion/columns/White-House-doesn_t-want-to-enforce-immigration-1007060-99891419.html#ixzz0w8gI2nha

MEXICANOCCUPATION.blogspot.comFAIRUS.orgJUDICIALWATCH.orgALIPAC.usIN FACT THERE ARE SO MANY MILLIONS OF MEXICANS USING FRAUDULENT SOCIAL SECURITY NUMBERS WITH COMMON HISPANIC NAMES, THAT E-VERIFY MAY BE ALREADY BE A WASTE OF TIME.HOWEVER, EVEN WITH THE STAGGERING UNEMPLOYMENT, FOR WHICH OBAMA HAS DONE NADA, HE’S STILL MAKING IT EASY FOR ILLEGALS TO TAKE OUR JOBS

Obama Administration Challenges Arizona E-Verify LawThe Obama administration has asked the Supreme Court to strike down a 2007 Arizona law that punishes employers who hire illegal aliens, a law enacted by then-Governor Janet Napolitano. (Solicitor General's Amicus Curiae Brief). Called the “Legal Arizona Workers Act,” the law requires all employers in Arizona to use E-Verify and provides that the business licenses of those who hire illegal workers shall be repealed. From the date of enactment, the Chamber of Commerce and other special interest groups have been trying to undo it, attacking it through a failed ballot initiative and also through a lawsuit. Now the Chamber is asking the United States Supreme Court to hear the case (Chamber of Commerce v. Candelaria), and the Obama Administration is weighing in against the law. To date, Arizona’s E-Verify law has been upheld by all lower courts, including the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals. The Ninth Circuit, in particular, viewed it as an exercise of a state’s traditional power to regulate businesses. (San Francisco Chronicle, June 2, 2010). Obama’s Justice Department, however, disagrees. Acting Solicitor General Neal Katyal said in his filing with the Supreme Court that the lower courts were wrong to uphold the statute because federal immigration law expressly preempts any state law imposing sanctions on employers hiring illegal immigrants. Mr. Katyal argues that this is not a licensing law, but “a statute that prohibits the hiring of unauthorized aliens and uses suspension and revocation of all state-issued licenses as its ultimate sanction.” (Solicitor General's Amicus Curiae Brief, p. 10). This is the administration’s first court challenge to a state’s authority to act against illegal immigration, and could be a preview of the battle brewing over Arizona’s recent illegal immigration crackdown through SB 1070. Napolitano has made no comment on the Department of Justice’s decision to challenge the 2007 law, but federal officials said that she has taken an active part in the debate over whether to do so. (Politico, May 28, 2010). As Governor of Arizona, Napolitano said she believed the state law was valid and became a defendant in the many lawsuits against it. (Id.).

illegals vs crime206 Most wanted criminals in Los Angeles. Out of 206 criminals--183 are hispanic---171 of those are wanted for Murder.

*TEN MOST WANTED CRIMINALS IN CALIFORNIA ARE MEXICANS!http://ag.ca.gov/wanted/mostwanted.php?fid=mostWantedFugitives_2010-01

ACCORDING TO SENATOR LAMAR SMITH OF TEXAS, WHEN CHALLENGING SO- CALLED “HOMELAND SECURITY = PATHWAY TO CITIZENSHIPS” LA RAZA JANET NAPOLITANO, AS TO WHY OUR BORDERS ARE WIDE OPEN TO NARCOMEX, OBAMA HAS CUT ENFORCEMENT BY MORE THAN 60% IN ALL AREAS. Obama soft on illegals enforcement

Arrests of illegal immigrant workers have dropped precipitously under President Obama, according to figures released Wednesday. Criminal arrests, administrative arrests, indictments and convictions of illegal immigrants at work sites all fell by more than 50 percent from fiscal 2008 to fiscal 2009.

The figures show that Mr. Obama has made good on his pledge to shift enforcement away from going after illegal immigrant workers themselves - but at the expense of Americans' jobs, said Rep. Lamar Smith of Texas, the Republican who compiled the numbers from the Department of Homeland Security's U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency (ICE). Mr. Smith, the top Republican on the House Judiciary Committee, said a period of economic turmoil is the wrong time to be cutting enforcement and letting illegal immigrants take jobs that Americans otherwise would hold. *FAIRUS.orgFEDERATION FOR AMERICAN IMMIGRATION REFORMFAIR CHARACTERIZES THE OBAMA, AND LA RAZA DEMS PLAN FOR AMNESTY AS FOLLOWS:That's why, throughout 2009 FAIR has been tracking every move the administration and Congress has made to undermine our immigration laws, reward illegal aliens and burden taxpayers. • Foot-dragging on proven methods of immigration law enforcement including border structures and E-Verify. • Appointment of several illegal alien advocates to important administration posts.• Watering down of the 287(g) program to limit local law in their own jurisdictions. • Health care reform that mandates a “public option” for newly-arrived legal immigrants as well as illegal aliens. *latimes.comOpinionCalifornia must stem the flow of illegal immigrantsThe state should go after employers who hire them, curb taxpayer-funded benefits, deploy the National Guard to help the feds at the border and penalize 'sanctuary' cities.

Illegal immigration is another matter entirely. With the state budget in tatters, millions of residents out of work and a state prison system strained by massive overcrowding, California simply cannot continue to ignore the strain that illegal immigration puts on our budget and economy. Illegal aliens cost taxpayers in our state billions of dollars each year. As economist Philip J. Romero concluded in a 2007 study, "illegal immigrants impose a 'tax' on legal California residents in the tens of billions of dollars."

*Lou Dobbs Tonight Wednesday, June 10, 2009

Gov. Schwarzenegger said California is facing “financial Armageddon”. He is making drastic cuts in the budget for education, health care and services. But there is one place he isn’t making cuts… services for illegal immigrants. These services are estimated to cost the state four to five billion dollars a year. Schwarzenegger said he is “happy” to offer these services. We will have a full report tonight. *

“For the past several weeks, virtually every economic indicator has been worse than economists’ forecasts.”“However, his only concrete proposal was to extend the Bush tax cuts for the wealthy—the 2 percent of households making more than $250,000 a year.”“Those “tough decisions” include the multi-trillion-dollar bailout of the banks, the forced bankruptcy of General Motors and Chrysler, liquidation of tens of thousands of auto jobs, and imposition of a 50 percent cut in newly-hired auto workers’ wages, as well as the rejection of any further stimulus measures and focus instead on deeper cuts in social programs.”“Neither the Obama administration nor its Republican opponents are proposing any serious measures to create jobs or provide relief for the more than 20 million workers who are either unemployed or underemployed. The Democrats and Republicans differ only on the most effective tactics for imposing the full burden of the capitalist crisis on the working class.”*HERE’S Rep. Lamar Smith’s comment on OBAMA’S endless sellout to illegals:THE ENTIRE REASON THE BORDERS ARE LEFT OPEN IS TO CUT WAGES!

“We could cut unemployment in half simply by reclaiming the jobs taken by illegal workers,” said Representative Lamar Smith of Texas, co-chairman of the Reclaim American Jobs Caucus. “President Obama is on the wrong side of the American people on immigration. The president should support policies that help citizens and legal immigrants find the jobs they need and deserve rather than fail to enforce immigration laws.” * “The principal beneficiaries of our current immigration policy are affluent Americans who hire immigrants at substandard wages for low-end work. Harvard economist George Borjas estimates that American workers lose $190 billion annually in depressed wages caused by the constant flooding of the labor market at the low-wage end.” Christian Science Monitor*Record drop in US home salesBy Barry Grey 25 August 2010Sales of existing US homes in July plunged by a record 27.2 percent from the previous month, according to a report released Tuesday by the National Association of Realtors.The virtual collapse in home sales affected every region of the country and was more than twice as bad as anticipated by economic analysts, who had forecast a drop of 12.1 percent. Sales fell to 3.83 million units, compared to June’s downwardly revised figure of 5.26 million.On a year-over-year basis, existing home sales in July were down 25.5 percent from an annual rate of 5.14 million units in July 2009.The July figure was the largest monthly drop since records began in 1968. It brought the rate of US home sales on an annualized basis to the lowest level since 1995.Home sales fell 29.5 percent in the Northeast, 22.6 percent in the South, 25 percent in the West and 35 percent in the Midwest. The link between the housing collapse and the social distress caused by long-term mass unemployment was underscored by two pieces of data: nearly a third of the homes sold were distressed properties, and sales tumbled particularly sharply for homes in the lower to mid-priced ranges. In the Midwest, sales of homes priced between $100,000 and $250,000 plunged nearly 47 percent.The July figure marked the third consecutive monthly decline since the April 30 expiration of a federal tax credit for home-buyers. The impact of the termination of the tax credit on the housing market has been compounded by the soaring number of foreclosed homes and the rising rate of mortgage payment delinquency.Home foreclosures are running about ten times higher than before the housing bust of 2007. A survey released last week by Deutsche Bank showed that the rate of serious mortgage payment delinquency (more than 90 days) in the average US congressional district has nearly tripled from the time of the 2008 election.The realtors’ report also recorded a sharp rise in the inventory of unsold existing homes in July. At the end of the month, 3.98 million homes were available for sale, which translates into a 12.5-month supply, up from 8.9 months in June and the highest level in over a decade. A six-month supply of available homes is considered a healthy level.The disastrous home sales report is consistent with dismal reports last week on housing starts and new housing permits and other data, including a nine-month high for initial jobless benefit claims, which reflect a sharp contraction in economic growth and point to a further rise in unemployment, already near Depression levels.Most economists believe that when the Commerce Department issues its revised estimate for second quarter US economic growth on Friday, it will downgrade the figure from the 2.4 percent it reported last month to 1.3 percent. Even this grim prediction may be overly optimistic. For the past several weeks, virtually every economic indicator has been worse than economists’ forecasts.Dan Greenhaus, chief economic strategist for Miller Tabak & Co., spoke in a research note Tuesday of a “near, if not outright, collapse in housing.”Paul Dales of Capital Economics said, “It is becoming abundantly clear that the housing market is undermining the already faltering wider economic recovery. With an increasingly inevitable double-dip in housing prices yet to come, things could get a lot worse.”In a note analyzing the housing numbers, Nigel Gault, chief US economist for HIS Global Insight, wrote, “A sustained upturn [in the housing market] will depend on an improvement in the jobs market, which at the moment is slowing down rather than gathering pace.” He added, “There is no sign of any underlying recovery despite rock-bottom interest rates.”The average rate for a 30-year fixed mortgage has sunk to 4.42 percent, the lowest rate in decades. That home sales continue to plummet despite such attractive rates underscores the depth of the economic crisis and absence of any real recovery. Workers who would otherwise be in the market are not buying either because they have lost their job or they fear joining the jobless ranks. Banks have also tightened their requirements and cut back on loans.Stock markets around the world fell sharply on the latest sign of a slowdown in the US economy. Asian stocks, which fell Tuesday morning, in part in anticipation of the US housing report, resumed their decline on Wednesday. European stocks fell by more than 1 percent Tuesday, as did US stocks. The Dow Jones Industrial Average lost 133 points, a decline of 1.3 percent. The Standard & Poor’s 500 index and the Nasdaq fell even more sharply on a percentage basis. It was the fourth consecutive decline on Wall Street.Other global indicators pointed to an erosion of confidence and mounting fear of a “double-dip” recession. Crude oil prices fell below $72 a barrel, their lowest level in eleven weeks. Gold for December delivery closed $4.90 higher at $1,233.40 an ounce at the Comex division of the New York Mercantile Exchange. The yield on ten-year US Treasuries fell to 2.499 percent, reflecting a “flight to safety” by big investors.Neither the Obama administration nor its Republican opponents are proposing any serious measures to create jobs or provide relief for the more than 20 million workers who are either unemployed or underemployed. The Democrats and Republicans differ only on the most effective tactics for imposing the full burden of the capitalist crisis on the working class.On Tuesday, John Boehner, the leader of the Republicans in the House of Representatives, made a demagogic speech in which he attempted to present himself as the advocate for unemployed and economically threatened working people. He denounced Obama for failing to stem the jobs crisis and called for the resignation of Obama’s top economic advisers, Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner and Lawrence Summers, the director of the White House National Economic Council.However, his only concrete proposal was to extend the Bush tax cuts for the wealthy—the 2 percent of households making more than $250,000 a year. He also criticized the extension of federal emergency jobless benefits and the $26 billion in federal aid to the states recently passed by Congress.In response, the Democrats, speaking out of both sides of their mouths, sought to foist the blame for mass unemployment and growing poverty on the Bush administration, while touting the supposed “success” of Obama’s economic policies. Vice President Joseph Biden said that Obama’s 2009 stimulus package was “working to rescue the economy from eight years of failed economic policy and rebuild it even stronger than before.”Speaking from the exclusive Massachusetts resort island of Martha’s Vineyard, where Obama is vacationing, White House deputy press secretary Bill Burton said Boehner “would fire the very people who helped to make the tough decisions, who helped to do the hard work to get our economy moving in the right direction again.”Those “tough decisions” include the multi-trillion-dollar bailout of the banks, the forced bankruptcy of General Motors and Chrysler, liquidation of tens of thousands of auto jobs, and imposition of a 50 percent cut in newly-hired auto workers’ wages, as well as the rejection of any further stimulus measures and focus instead on deeper cuts in social programs.Biden cited Obama’s auto policy as an example of successful “innovation.” The essence of this policy is to keep unemployment painfully high and use it as a bludgeon to permanently reduce the wages and living standards of the American working class, narrowing the differential between US workers and super-exploited workers in China, India and other “emerging economies.” On this basis, the Obama administration is seeking to revive US manufacturing as a cheap-labor platform for export to global markets.*CORPORATE DONORS’ PROFITS CAN NEVER BE HIGH ENOUGH! WAGES CAN NEVER BE LOW ENOUGH!Biden cited Obama’s auto policy as an example of successful “innovation.” The essence of this policy is to keep unemployment painfully high and use it as a bludgeon to permanently reduce the wages and living standards of the American working class, narrowing the differential between US workers and super-exploited workers in China, India and other “emerging economies.”*The assault on US workers’ wages19 August 2010An article published in Wednesday’s Financial Times under the headline “US Matches Indian Call Centre Costs” gives some indication of the impact on American workers of a coordinated and escalating wage-cutting drive by big business, backed by the Obama administration.The article begins: “Call centre workers are becoming as cheap to hire in the US as they are in India, according to the head of the country’s largest business process outsourcing company. High unemployment levels have driven down wages for some low-skilled outsourcing services in some parts of the US, particularly among the Hispanic population.” ********** NO WONDER OBAMA CAN’T HISPANDER ENOUGH! AND WHY MOST OF THE FORTUNE 500 ARE GENEROUS DONORS TO LA RAZA, THE MEX FASCIST PARTY of AMERICA… keeping the illegals pouring over our OPEN & UNDEFENDED BORDERS!

*

July 13, 2010

Former Secretary of Labor, Professor at BerkeleyPosted: July 13, 2010 12:16 PM

The Root of Economic Fragility and Political Anger Missing from almost all discussion of America's dizzying rate of unemployment is the brute fact that hourly wages of people with jobs have been dropping, adjusted for inflation. Average weekly earnings rose a bit this spring only because the typical worker put in more hours, but June's decline in average hours pushed weekly paychecks down at an annualized rate of 4.5 percent.In other words, Americans are keeping their jobs or finding new ones only by accepting lower wages.Meanwhile, a much smaller group of Americans' earnings are back in the stratosphere: Wall Street traders and executives, hedge-fund and private-equity fund managers, and top corporate executives. As hiring has picked up on the Street, fat salaries are reappearing. Richard Stein, president of Global Sage, an executive search firm, tells the New York Times corporate clients have offered compensation packages of more than $1 million annually to a dozen candidates in just the last few weeks.We're back to the same ominous trend as before the Great Recession: a larger and larger share of total income going to the very top while the vast middle class continues to lose ground.And as long as this trend continues, we can't get out of the shadow of the Great Recession. When most of the gains from economic growth go to a small sliver of Americans at the top, the rest don't have enough purchasing power to buy what the economy is capable of producing.America's median wage, adjusted for inflation, has barely budged for decades. Between 2000 and 2007 it actually dropped. Under these circumstances the only way the middle class could boost its purchasing power was to borrow, as it did with gusto. As housing prices rose, Americans turned their homes into ATMs. But such borrowing has its limits. When the debt bubble finally burst, vast numbers of people couldn't pay their bills, and banks couldn't collect. Each of America's two biggest economic downturns over the last century has followed the same pattern. Consider: in 1928 the richest 1 percent of Americans received 23.9 percent of the nation's total income. After that, the share going to the richest 1 percent steadily declined. New Deal reforms, followed by World War II, the GI Bill and the Great Society expanded the circle of prosperity. By the late 1970s the top 1 percent raked in only 8 to 9 percent of America's total annual income. But after that, inequality began to widen again, and income reconcentrated at the top. By 2007 the richest 1 percent were back to where they were in 1928--with 23.5 percent of the total.We all know what happened in the years immediately following these twin peaks--in 1929 and 2008. Yes, China, Germany and Japan have contributed to America's demand-side problem by failing to buy as much from us as we buy from them. But to believe that our continuing economic crisis stems mainly from the trade imbalance--we buy too much and save too little, while they do the reverse--is to miss the biggest imbalance of all. The problem isn't that typical Americans have spent beyond their means. It's that their means haven't kept up with what the growing economy could and should have been able to provide them.A second parallel links 1929 with 2008: when earnings accumulate at the top, people at the top invest their wealth in whatever assets seem most likely to attract other big investors. This causes the prices of certain assets--commodities, stocks, dot-coms or real estate--to become wildly inflated. Such speculative bubbles eventually burst, leaving behind mountains of near-worthless collateral.The crash of 2008 didn't turn into another Great Depression because the government learned the importance of flooding the market with cash, thereby temporarily rescuing some stranded consumers and most big bankers. But the financial rescue didn't change the economy's underlying structure -- median wages dropping while those at the top are raking in the lion's share of income.That's why America's middle class still doesn't have the purchasing power it needs to reboot the economy, and why the so-called recovery will be so tepid--maybe even leading to a double dip. It's also why America will be vulnerable to even larger speculative booms and deeper busts in the years to come.The structural problem began in the late 1970s when a wave of new technologies (air cargo, container ships and terminals, satellite communications and, later, the Internet) radically reduced the costs of outsourcing jobs abroad. Other new technologies (automated machinery, computers and ever more sophisticated software applications) took over many other jobs (remember bank tellers? telephone operators? service station attendants?). By the '80s, any job requiring that the same steps be performed repeatedly was disappearing--going over there or into software. Meanwhile, as the pay of most workers flattened or dropped, the pay of well-connected graduates of prestigious colleges and MBA programs--the so-called "talent" who reached the pinnacles of power in executive suites and on Wall Street--soared.The puzzle is why so little was done to counteract these forces. Government could have given employees more bargaining power to get higher wages, especially in industries sheltered from global competition and requiring personal service: big-box retail stores, restaurants and hotel chains, and child- and eldercare, for instance. Safety nets could have been enlarged to compensate for increasing anxieties about job loss: unemployment insurance covering part-time work, wage insurance if pay drops, transition assistance to move to new jobs in new locations, insurance for communities that lose a major employer so they can lure other employers. With the gains from economic growth the nation could have provided Medicare for all, better schools, early childhood education, more affordable public universities, more extensive public transportation. And if more money was needed, taxes could have been raised on the rich.Big, profitable companies could have been barred from laying off a large number of workers all at once, and could have been required to pay severance--say, a year of wages--to anyone they let go. Corporations whose research was subsidized by taxpayers could have been required to create jobs in the United States. The minimum wage could have been linked to inflation. And America's trading partners could have been pushed to establish minimum wages pegged to half their countries' median wages--thereby ensuring that all citizens shared in gains from trade and creating a new global middle class that would buy more of our exports.But starting in the late 1970s, and with increasing fervor over the next three decades, government did just the opposite. It deregulated and privatized. It increased the cost of public higher education and cut public transportation. It shredded safety nets. It halved the top income tax rate from the range of 70-90 percent that prevailed during the 1950s and '60s to 28-40 percent; it allowed many of the nation's rich to treat their income as capital gains subject to no more than 15 percent tax and escape inheritance taxes altogether. At the same time, America boosted sales and payroll taxes, both of which have taken a bigger chunk out of the pay of the middle class and the poor than of the well-off.Companies were allowed to slash jobs and wages, cut benefits and shift risks to employees (from you-can-count-on-it pensions to do-it-yourself 401(k)s, from good health coverage to soaring premiums and deductibles). They busted unions and threatened employees who tried to organize. The biggest companies went global with no more loyalty or connection to the United States than a GPS device. Washington deregulated Wall Street while insuring it against major losses, turning finance--which until recently had been the servant of American industry--into its master, demanding short-term profits over long-term growth and raking in an ever larger portion of the nation's profits. And nothing was done to impede CEO salaries from skyrocketing to more than 300 times that of the typical worker (from thirty times during the Great Prosperity of the 1950s and '60s), while the pay of financial executives and traders rose into the stratosphere.It's too facile to blame Ronald Reagan and his Republican ilk. Democrats have been almost as reluctant to attack inequality or even to recognize it as the central economic and social problem of our age. (As Bill Clinton's labor secretary, I should know.) The reason is simple. As money has risen to the top, so has political power. Politicians are more dependent than ever on big money for their campaigns. Modern Washington is far removed from the Gilded Age, when, it's been said, the lackeys of robber barons literally deposited sacks of cash on the desks of friendly legislators. Today's cash comes in the form of ever increasing campaign donations from corporate executives and Wall Street, their ever larger platoons of lobbyists and their hordes of PR flacks.The Great Recession could have spawned another era of fundamental reform, just as the Great Depression did. But the financial rescue reduced immediate demands for broader reform.Obama might still have succeeded had he framed the challenge accurately. Yet in reassuring the public that the economy will return to normal he has missed a key opportunity to expose the longer-term scourge of widening inequality and its dangers. Containing the immediate financial crisis and then claiming the economy is on the mend has left the public with a diffuse set of economic problems that seem unrelated and inexplicable, as if a town's fire chief deals with a conflagration by protecting the biggest office buildings but leaving smaller fires simmering all over town: housing foreclosures, job losses, lower earnings, less economic security, soaring pay on Wall Street and in executive suites.Much the same has occurred with efforts to reform the financial system. The White House and Democratic leaders could have described the overarching goal as overhauling economic institutions that bestow outsize rewards on a relative few while imposing extraordinary costs and risks on almost everyone else. Instead, they have defined the goal narrowly: reducing risks to the financial system caused by particular practices on Wall Street. The solution has thereby shriveled to a set of technical fixes for how the Street should conduct its business.What we get from widening inequality is not only a more fragile economy but also an angrier politics. When virtually all the gains from growth go to a small minority at the top -- and the broad middle class can no longer pretend it's richer than it is by using homes as collateral for deepening indebtedness -- the result is deep-seated anxiety and frustration. This is an open invitation to demagogues who misconnect the dots and direct the anger toward immigrants, the poor, foreign nations, big government, "socialists," "intellectual elites," or even big business and Wall Street. The major fault line in American politics is no longer between Democrats and Republicans, liberals and conservatives, but between the "establishment" and an increasingly mad-as-hell populace determined to "take back America" from it.When they understand where this is heading, powerful interests that have so far resisted fundamental reform may come to see that the alternative is far worse.This post originally appeared at RobertReich.org*latimes.comCorporate America, it's time to spread the wealthBusinesses are sitting on a record hoard of cash, but they're not using it to hire workers or pay existing ones better wages. Broadly distributing the fruits of economic growth is the only way to sustain that growth.Michael HiltzikAugust 25, 2010Advertisement

Corporate America must be in a bad way. Job growth has stagnated, the prospects for hiring, at least in the near term, seem grim, and the polls of top executives sound universally glum.

And yet, operating earnings of companies in the Standard & Poor's 500 index jumped 38.4% in the second quarter compared with a year earlier, according to Thomson Reuters, and companies are sitting on an estimated $1.8 trillion in cash -- by some measures, a record mound of cash.

Somebody's making money in this economy. Unfortunately, it's not the middle class or the working class. And that's our real problem.

The business lobby talks as though the flat-lined job picture isn't the fault of employers. Certainly it's true that it's not entirely the fault of employers. Chamber of Commerce types overemphasize doubts about the strength of the economic recovery, the prospect of higher federal taxes and the costs of government initiatives such as healthcare reform.

Some aren't above suggesting that American workers have simply become too lazy to get off unemployment and do some real work.

That was the theme of a recent article in the Wall Street Journal quoting several business owners marveling at the dearth of applicants for skilled job openings. But you had to do some math to find a clue to why this might be.

One business was looking to pay $13 an hour for machinists. That works out to about $27,000 a year (assuming vacation is paid for), or about the federal poverty line for a family of five.

Now, it's possible that the business owner couldn't possibly afford to pay a penny more. Or he might be thinking that with unemployment nosing 10% he could try bidding down. But the article also quoted him saying his company could grow sharply if it only had the personnel, so perhaps he should consider bidding up.

The idea that only a shrinking proportion of American workers deserves a solid middle-class income seems to have become ingrained in parts of the business community over the last few years. That was the thought behind the punishing Southern California grocery lockout and strike of 2003-04, when the supermarket chains pressed for a wage and benefit system on which it would be difficult if not impossible to raise a family. (They got their way for new employees.)

How has that worked out? The share price of Safeway Inc., the owner of Vons and Pavilions and one of the chief drivers of the dispute, has barely budged since January 2004. The company swung from a profit of $560 million in 2004 to a loss of roughly $1 billion last year, a performance it largely blames on the crummy economy.

This is just one more manifestation of increasing income inequality in America, where the rich have gotten richer and the middle and working class have gone into debt to merely hang on. Whenever I write about the need for corporations and the wealthy to shoulder their fair share of taxes, I can count on receiving numerous e-mails instructing me that we need to cosset the rich because they're the source of job growth. "I've never been offered a job by a poor person" is the usual refrain.

The answer to this argument is that there are precious few firms that can survive purely on the patronage of the top 1% of income-earners, or even the top 20%. When no one can afford to buy, no one has customers. Broadly distributing the fruits of economic growth is the only way to sustain that growth.

Ford Motor Co. understood as long ago as 1914, when it raised its daily wage to $5. The company's new living wage all but eliminated absenteeism, built workplace loyalty and helped create a huge new market for automobiles. You want to call Henry Ford a "socialist" for implementing this idea, go right ahead.

Corporate America, in the aggregate, has the apparent capacity to do the same today. The Federal Reserve reported in June that nonfinancial companies were holding cash totaling more than $1.8 trillion, having built up their hoards at a rate unmatched in more than 50 years. That's a lot of money being held out of the economy, dwarfing what the government stimulus program is putting in.

There's nothing inherently good or bad about a company's stockpiling of cash. It can bespeak a strong balance sheet. Or, if it's the proceeds of lots of expensive borrowing, a weak one. It can build corporate wealth if it's invested profitably in the business or stagnation if it just sits around in low-yielding instruments.

It can be the work of a visionary chief executive building a war chest for a big move or of a shrinking violet with nothing on his mind except inflating his company's bank account with big numbers.

The only important question is: "What are they doing with the money?"

One thing they're not doing is lavishing it on personnel, though some have taken steps to help shareholders. At least 135 companies in the S&P 500 jacked up their shareholder dividends in the first half of this year.

Among the others, let's consider one of the most cash-rich companies in the S&P, Hewlett-Packard Co., which has been getting scrutinized by management pundits lately for reasons other than, um, corporate strategy. As of July 31, HP reported cash of $14.7 billion (up from $11.3 billion in 2007), which ranked it around 13th among S&P 500 companies.

In 2009, under its just-departed CEO Mark Hurd, the firm cut base pay for many employees, cut its matching contributions to their 401(k) plans and made them conditional on financial results, and eliminated a discount on share purchases by its employees. Hurd also cut HP's research and development spending to 2.5% of revenue in 2009, half its ratio in 2003, another act that elevates the here-and-now over the what-lies-ahead.

HP hasn't raised its dividend lately, but in 2008 and 2009, its board authorized share buybacks totaling $16 billion, according to its SEC filings. By supporting the share price, that money flows to shareholders rather than wage-earners. All of this might help explain why (judging from public message boards) the HP rank and file were delighted by Hurd's departure, albeit resentful that he was leaving with a severance package worth more than $30 million.

Obviously there's no way to force employers to hire more workers or to give the ones they have better pay, any more than there's any way to force bailed-out banks to use their money to make loans. But funneling corporate wealth to shareholders at the expense of the workers who create that wealth isn't any smarter today than it was 10 years ago, when it got us into this economic fix, and it sure won't lead us to a brighter tomorrow.

“The response of the administration was to rush to the defense of the banks. Even before coming to power, Obama expressed his unconditional support for the bailouts, which he subsequently expanded. He assembled an administration dominated by the interests of finance capital, symbolized by economic adviser Lawrence Summers and Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner.”*THE REASON OBAMA BROUGHT IN GEITHNER, BUSH’S ARCHITECT FOR BANKSTERS’ WELFARE, WAS TO SIGNAL HIS BANKSTER DONORS THERE WOULD BE NO CHANGE!

“Rattner’s evident involvement in the scheme underscores the criminal character of the Wall Street financiers who the Obama administration put in charge of destroying the jobs and living standards of auto workers. Selected by Timothy Geithner and Lawrence Summers—who were both deeply involved in the deregulation of the finance industry and the Wall Street bailout”Here’s what Obama did for GM and against the workers:The crisis in the auto industry—provoked by the 2008 financial breakdown and the plunge in auto sales to the lowest per-capita rate since World War II—was used by Wall Street and the US government to destroy jobs and wages and transform the industry into a lucrative investment for the same speculators who provoked the catastrophe.*HOW DO YOU EXPLAIN OBAMA’S SABOTAGE OF E-VERIFY, WHICH WOULD KEEP MILLIONS OF ILLEGALS OUT OF AMERICAN JOBS???

The economic crisis has led to a jobs crisis unlike anything seen since the Great Depression. The administration has rejected any government hiring programs. Throughout the crisis, Obama has endlessly repeated the claim that employment levels are a “lagging indicator.”*THE ENTIRE REASON OUR BORERS ARE LEFT OPEN AND UNDEFENDED IS TO KEEP WAGES DEPRESSED FOR HIS CORPORATE PAYMASTERS! THE BIGGEST ADVOCATE FOR OPEN BORDERS AND AMNESTY, BEYOND MEXICO’S DEMAND FOR SAME, IS THE U.S. CHAMBER of COMMERCE WHICH FRONTS FOR BIG BUSINESS! MOST OF THE FORTUNE 500 ARE GENEROUS DONORS TO THE MEXICAN FASCIST PARTY of LA RAZA!*Lou Dobbs Tonight Monday, June 16, 2008 Tonight, we’ll have all the latest on the devastating floods in the Midwest and all the day’s news from the campaign trail. The massive corporate mouthpiece the U.S. Chamber of Commerce is holding a “North American Forum” to lay out its “shared vision” for the United States, Canada and Mexico – which is to say a borderless, pro-business super-state in which U.S. sovereignty will be dissolved.

Undercover investigators have found incredibly lax security and enforcement at U.S. border crossings, according to a new report by the Government Accountability Office. This report comes on the heels of a separate report by U.C. San Diego that shows tougher border security efforts aren’t deterring illegal entries to the United States.*OBAMA LIED WHEN HE SAID HIS OBAMACARE DID NOT INCLUDE ILLEGALS! Tired of being Mexico’s welfare system???*The principal domestic program for which Obama is associated is the overhaul of the health care system. The bill was entirely tailored to the interests of insurance companies and giant corporations.*WSWS.org….. get on their free no ads E-NEWS!*After the elections: Behind the Democratic debacle4 November 2010Only a day after the midterm elections, the US media quickly coalesced around a narrative, accepted by everyone in the political establishment, that the victory of the Republican Party was a popular repudiation of the supposedly left-wing policies of the Obama administration. In his press conference on Wednesday, Obama himself adopted this analysis, pledging to work closely with the Republican Party, find some compromise on tax cuts for the wealthy, and improve his relations with corporate America.Underlying this claim are two premises, both of which are false: 1) that Obama has carried out an anti-corporate program during his first two years; and 2) that the population as a whole has used the election to give a rousing affirmation of capitalism and big business. These premises are not only absurd, they clash with the basic facts.In the flood of political commentary, no one in the mainstream media has suggested a far more plausible explanation: After coming to power by posing as the tribune of “hope” and "change you can believe in," Obama, through his pro-corporate and pro-war policies, has succeeded in alienating and politically demoralizing large sections of the population that had voted for him.The event that secured Obama's election was the spectacular collapse of Wall Street in September of 2008, which shattered whatever was left of the credibility of the Bush administration and deeply discredited the capitalist system itself. Obama came into office with an overwhelming mandate for radical reform.The response of the administration was to rush to the defense of the banks. Even before coming to power, Obama expressed his unconditional support for the bailouts, which he subsequently expanded. He assembled an administration dominated by the interests of finance capital, symbolized by economic adviser Lawrence Summers and Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner.The administration opposed any constraints on executive compensation and rejected out of hand sanctions against or the prosecution of those responsible for the economic catastrophe. Over the past two years, the wealthiest individuals have vastly expanded their share of the national income and the largest banks are expected to hand out record compensation packages.The economic crisis has led to a jobs crisis unlike anything seen since the Great Depression. The administration has rejected any government hiring programs. Throughout the crisis, Obama has endlessly repeated the claim that employment levels are a “lagging indicator.”After bailing out Wall Street, Obama oversaw the forced bankruptcy of General Motors and Chrysler, demanding that workers accept deep cuts in jobs, wages and benefits. As a result, profits for the auto giants have soared while the assault on auto workers’ wages has become the model for wage-cutting in every economic sector and in every part of the country.The consequences can be seen in the collapse of support for the Democratic Party in the industrial Midwest, the site of half the seats lost by Democrats in the House of Representatives. In Michigan, a center of the auto industry, the Republicans swept state and local offices, amid a turnout of only 45 percent. In Detroit, which had voted for Obama overwhelmingly in 2008, barely one in five voters showed up at the polls.The principal domestic program for which Obama is associated is the overhaul of the health care system. The bill was entirely tailored to the interests of insurance companies and giant corporations. For the sake of “bipartisanship,” Obama abandoned anything that hinted of progressive reform, including the “public option.” Elderly voters, in particular, quite correctly saw the entire measure as a step toward cutting Medicare benefits and rationing care, resulting in a significant electoral swing to the Republican Party, which recorded an 18 percent advantage among voters over 60.On foreign policy, Obama came to power on a wave of opposition to war. In the Democratic primaries in 2008, his main argument against rival Hillary Clinton was that he had not voted to support the Iraq war. On assuming office, Obama quickly moved to reappoint those responsible for the war under Bush, including Defense Secretary Robert Gates and General David Petraeus. His administration has continued the occupation of Iraq, vastly expanded the war against Afghanistan and Pakistan, threatened new wars against Yemen and Iran, and deployed CIA drones to kill people all over the world.In every election since 2002, the issue of war has played a dominant role. Through the actions of the Obama administration, however, it is becoming clear to millions of people that it is impossible to end war by voting for the Democratic Party. Among young people, where opposition to war is particularly strong, turnout on Tuesday fell precipitously. Whereas voters aged 18 to 29 made up 18 percent of the electorate in 2008, they comprised only 10 percent this election.To the list of right-wing policies in Obama's first two years must be added: expanding the attack on democratic rights and opposing any prosecution of those responsible for torture and domestic spying; defending the profits of energy giant BP, responsible for the greatest environmental disaster in US history; and rejecting any moratorium on home foreclosures, despite evidence of massive fraud carried out by the very banks that are throwing millions out of their homes.Under the peculiar conditions of American politics, which excludes any opposition to the two parties of big business, mass disaffection with the Democratic Party found expression in the victory of the Republicans. In addition to capitalizing on the collapse in voter turnout for Democrats, Republicans were able to exploit the fact that all of Obama’s betrayals and his lack of principle exposed the insincerity and duplicity that permeates the Democratic Party and its liberal backers. The rhetoric of the Republicans resonated in sections of the population that felt they had been duped.The failure of the Obama administration is not simply failure of one individual. It is one expression of the failure of an entire political and economic system. Under conditions of long-term economic decline, American capitalism has no response to the capitalist crisis outside of an ever-expanding attack on the working class.The trade unions and the array of liberal and middle-class organizations that promoted Obama will point to the victory of the Republicans to insist once again that the Democrats must be supported. This is utterly bankrupt. The claim that the growth of extreme right-wing forces can be stopped by the election of Democrats is the opposite of the truth. The promotion of the Democratic Party facilitates its own anti-working class policies while creating the conditions for even more right-wing forces to come to the fore.The elections must be seen as a warning. The political system, including both parties, is moving ever further to the right. The aftermath of the elections will bring a deepening of the attacks on jobs and wages, a further erosion of democratic rights, and an expansion of war, including preparations for a global conflict with unimaginable consequences.In the midst of this crisis, American politics takes on a diseased character. Like an impacted tooth that leads to infection, the anger and discontent felt by millions of people are denied any genuine expression. So long as the working class remains trapped within the framework of the Democratic Party and the capitalist two-party system, it is the right wing that will exploit the situation to its advantage.Workers and young people have to seriously think through the implications. There is no way forward through the Democratic Party and capitalist politics. What is necessary is the building of an independent revolutionary movement of the working class in the struggle for socialism. This is the perspective that the Socialist Equality Party is fighting to bring to the broadest sections of workers and youth.Joseph Kishore *“The crisis in the auto industry—provoked by the 2008 financial breakdown and the plunge in auto sales to the lowest per-capita rate since World War II—was used by Wall Street and the US government to destroy jobs and wages and transform the industry into a lucrative investment for the same speculators who provoked the catastrophe.”*It's Official: The Government Isn't Getting Its Money Back Out of GMNov 2 2010, 12:46 PM ET 117 Well, they've priced the GM IPO, and it looks like they've valued the firm at just about what we lent it: $50 billion. Since the government only took a 60% stake, that's well below what would be needed for the government to recover its investment. Even with the billions they've already "paid back"--by not using all the money--Uncle Sam needed the company to be worth more like $70 billion to break even on the bailout.

IPOs are usually priced at a discount, in order to ensure that a lot of buyers are interested; this creates a robust, liquid aftermarket in the stock, so that if the company needs to go raise more capital, there will be lots of buyers and sellers. But even if you think that the price will go up in the aftermarket, the government is going to take a hefty 30% loss on the $10 billion worth of shares that will be sold in the initial public offering.

Moreover, the big block of stock that the government still owns will put some downward pressure on the price in the aftermarket. Everyone knows that the government is going to want to get rid of the remainder of its shares sooner rather than later, which means that secondary offerings will follow in fairly short order. Unless GM turns in some pretty spectacular profits, it looks to me like the government is going to lose at least $10 billion on this deal.

So can they turn in those profits? Mickey Kaus called me a "cheap date" for visiting GM and deciding that maybe the bailout wasn't such a bad idea after all. But that wasn't quite what I said: I said that with the competitive advantages conveyed by the bankruptcy, the company was probably viable; and that the bailout wasn't the worst thing the government had done in the past two years. I think both those statements are true!

But that is not an endorsement of the bailouts, which remain an expensive boondoggle. We could have given every autoworker $100,000, offered retraining and relocation assistance to tens of thousands of employees at their suppliers, and still come out ahead on this deal. Had we done this, we would have helped eliminate some of the overcapacity in the global auto industry, and sent a clear signal to CEOs that they should not emulate Rick Wagoner's pigheaded refusal to prepare for a possible reorganization.*The crisis in the auto industry—provoked by the 2008 financial breakdown and the plunge in auto sales to the lowest per-capita rate since World War II—was used by Wall Street and the US government to destroy jobs and wages and transform the industry into a lucrative investment for the same speculators who provoked the catastrophe.*Wsws.org… get on their free no ads E-NEWS*Obama’s car czar faces new lawsuits in kickback schemeBy Jerry White 23 November 2010On the same day that Wall Street celebrated a windfall from General Motors’ stock sale last week, one of the chief architects of Obama’s forced bankruptcy and restructuring of the US automaker was hit with two lawsuits. Steven Rattner is accused of participating in a kickback scheme to gain $150 million in business from the New York State pension fund.New York State Attorney General Andrew Cuomo filed the lawsuits against Rattner, the co-founder of the Quadrangle Group private equity firm, who was chosen by the White House to head the Auto Task Force. Cuomo is investigating illegal payoffs aimed at influencing investment decisions by pension fund officials who oversee $130 billion in assets. Charges have already led to several guilty pleas from key players.The attorney general is seeking a $26 million settlement from Rattner and to bar him from the securities industry in New York for the rest of his life. The Securities and Exchange Commission has already obtained a less severe settlement with Rattner over the so-called “pay-to-play” allegations.The Wall Street Journal reported that Rattner agreed to pay $6.2 million in his SEC settlement. He is also banned for two years from associating with any investment adviser or broker dealer. Rattner settled with the SEC without admitting or denying wrongdoing.On Monday, Henry “Hank” Morris—the former chief political advisor to former New York State Comptroller Alan Hevesi—pled guilty to securities fraud. He acknowledged that he had used his influence with Hevesi, who manages the New York pension fund, to steer investments to some of Wall Street’s largest firms, including the Carlyle Group, HM Capital and Rattner’s Quadrangle Group.According to Cuomo’s securities fraud suit, Rattner hired Morris for $1 million as part of a scheme to win an investment for Quadrangle, which Rattner then headed. In 2004 and 2005, the state retirement fund channeled $150 million to Quadrangle.Rattner’s former company reached a settlement with the attorney general’s office last spring and agreed to cooperate in the probe of Rattner. Quadrangle issued a statement saying, “We wholly disavow the conduct engaged in by Steve Rattner. That conduct was inappropriate, wrong and unethical.”Rattner’s evident involvement in the scheme underscores the criminal character of the Wall Street financiers who the Obama administration put in charge of destroying the jobs and living standards of auto workers. Selected by Timothy Geithner and Lawrence Summers—who were both deeply involved in the deregulation of the finance industry and the Wall Street bailout—Rattner wrote in his recently released book Overhaul that his lack of knowledge of the auto industry was not important. “This was not a managerial job it was a restructuring and private equity assignment,” he wrote.The crisis in the auto industry—provoked by the 2008 financial breakdown and the plunge in auto sales to the lowest per-capita rate since World War II—was used by Wall Street and the US government to destroy jobs and wages and transform the industry into a lucrative investment for the same speculators who provoked the catastrophe.Rattner recently told investors that, after its restructuring, GM would soon “gush” profits. As for the lack of popular enthusiasm for an auto industry rescue, which benefited only Wall Street, Rattner told MSNBC, “The American people seem to have trouble processing the success not only of this [auto] bailout but even the bank bailout. These are things that saved the country.”Rattner left a career as a New York Times business reporter to go to Wall Street in the early 1980s. He rose through the ranks at Lehman Brothers and Morgan Stanley before landing the number two spot at investment firm Lazard Freres & Co. At Lazard he was an integral player in media mega-deals, such as the sale of Paramount Communications to Viacom. In 2000, Rattner co-founded a private equity firm, Quadrangle Group LLC, which manages New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg's $13 billion-plus personal fortune and advises him on his media empire.According to Fortune, the man who demanded that auto workers accept poverty level wages and retirees do without optical and dental care lives in a “sprawling” Manhattan apartment building—also the residence of billionaire George Soros—which “overlooks Central Park and the Metropolitan Museum of Art (where he is on the board).” The magazine continued, “He has a horse-farm in North Salem, New York, in northern Westchester County, near his friend, New York City Mayor Mike Bloomberg, and is building a 15,575-square foot house on the water in Martha’s Vineyard”—where he often pilots his private jet.On his way up the financial ladder, the Washington Post reported, Rattner also became a central figure in Democratic politics and a leading fundraiser for Al Gore, John Kerry, Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama. His wife is former Democratic National Committee finance chairwoman Maureen White.With friends in such high places, Rattner has vowed to fight the lawsuits and accused Cuomo of “bullying” him. Rattner suggested Cuomo was resentful because Rattner and his wife had provided financial support for political rivals of the attorney general and now governor-elect of New York.Having sought to loot the pension fund for thousands of New York state employees, Rattner worked with the UAW to offload GM’s retiree health care fund on the union, paid with GM stock. This was a key factor in boosting the value of GM shares last week. While the UAW officials cashed in—receiving more than $3 billion during GM’s IPO—the union-controlled retiree trust is severely under funded and is expected to push through even deeper cuts in health care benefits.

*WHY OBAMA’S BANKSTER DONORS LOVE ’IM:“This ignores, for one thing, the fact that US banks and corporations are already sitting on a cash hoard of over $1 trillion.”*WSWS.org …get on their free emailsObama unveils pro-business “jobs” planBy Tom Eley 9 September 2010President Barack Obama’s Wednesday speech on the economy in Cleveland, Ohio was an exercise in deceit and demagogy. Presenting himself as a defender of the middle class against the wealthy, Obama outlined a “jobs plan” based on a series of corporate tax give-aways that have long been championed by the Republican Party. The president made no proposals for direct job creation.The Cleveland speech is part of a campaign to stave off what are widely predicted to be major losses for the Democrats in the upcoming November elections. It comes on the heels of Obama’s Labor Day speech in Milwaukee and in advance of a Friday press conference on the economy.Obama’s new plan hinges almost exclusively on tax breaks for corporations, justified with the threadbare claim that the windfalls will convince firms to hire more workers. This ignores, for one thing, the fact that US banks and corporations are already sitting on a cash hoard of over $1 trillion.By way of defending his opposition to public works programs or other forms of government job creation, Obama offered a bald statement of his subordination to big business. “I’ve never believed that government’s role is to create jobs or prosperity,” he said. “I believe it’s the private sector that must be the main engine of our recovery.”New give-aways for corporations in his plan include allowing them to deduct from their taxes the full value of new equipment purchases. He also proposed to increase and make permanent a tax credit for corporate research and development.As for Obama’s proposed $50 billion in funding for transportation development—a tiny fraction of the financial outlay required to repair the nation’s crumbling infrastructure—it would merely extend existing funding that is currently set to expire, while establishing an “infrastructure bank” that would attempt to secure profits for private investors in public projects.*(THERE ARE NOW 38 MILLION ILLEGALS HERE WITH MORE COMING OVER OUR OPEN AND UNDEFENDED BORDERS DAILY!... BUT NOT ALL ARE CRIMINALS! SOME ARE JUST PREGNANT AND WANT 18 YEARS OF ANCHOR WELFARE, AND SOME JUST WANT YOUR JOB!)*All told, the new economic measures would cost about $180 billion. According to economist Mark Zandi, the program might “a year from now… create tens of thousands of jobs.” As the Washington Post noted, “This would be a drop in the bucket compared with the 7.6 million jobs lost during the recession that began in December 2007.”Meager as it is, the proposal has virtually no chance of passing, a fact underscored by its cool reception among many congressional Democrats. “Republicans noted that top Democratic leaders and embattled candidates were virtually silent on the proposals,” the Wall Street Journal observed. “House Democratic leadership aides said they did not want to move forward without assurance that the Senate could pass the measures. And Senate aides gave no such promises.”As always, the Democrats, who hold historically large margins in both houses, claim their hands are tied by Republican opposition. “The only way we can get anything done is with cooperation of Republicans, and that’s been in short supply in recent months,” said Jim Manley, spokesman for Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid.What Obama presented as the main difference between the White House and congressional Republicans—whether or not to extend Bush administration tax cuts for the wealthy set to expire in January—is also more pretense than reality.Obama claims to favor continuing the tax breaks only for households that earn less than $200,000 a year for an individual or $250,000 for a couple, about 98 percent of all households. But prominent Democrats, including Reid and former Office of Management and Budget head Peter Orszag, have already signaled their support for an extension of the cuts for the 2 percent with incomes above the cut-off levels as well.*(“Cut regulations for special interests” … OBAMA DID THAT FOR HIS BANKSTER DONORS WITH HIS GEITHNER NO REAL BANKSTER REGULATION. BANKSTER CRIMES SOARING, PROFITS SOARING, AND SO ARE FORECLOSURES!..... OBAMA’S CONFESSION: “We saw financial firms and CEOs take in record profits and record bonuses”)*In his speech, Obama sought to obscure the Democrats’ share of responsibility for the economic disaster, pinning blame on the “governing philosophy” of the Bush years: “Cut taxes, especially for millionaires and billionaires. Cut regulations for special interests. The idea was that if we had blind faith in the market; if we let corporations play by their own rules; if we left everyone else to fend for themselves, America would grow and prosper.”“For a time, this idea gave us the illusion of prosperity,” Obama continued. “We saw financial firms and CEOs take in record profits and record bonuses… But while all this was happening, the broader economy was becoming weaker... The wages and incomes of middle-class families kept falling while the cost of everything from tuition to health care kept rising. Folks were forced to put more debt on their credit cards and borrow against homes that many couldn’t afford in the first place. Meanwhile, a failure to pay for two wars and two tax cuts for the wealthy helped turn a record surplus into a record deficit.”These remarks reveal the Obama administration’s contempt for the intelligence of the public. The White House seems to assume that the American people are suffering from collective amnesia.The policies of tax cuts for the rich and deregulation have long been bipartisan. They were expanded during the Clinton years.And they have continued under Obama. One wonders whether Obama and his handlers think the public has forgotten that Obama supported the multi-trillion-dollar bailout of Wall Street under Bush and extended it once he came to power. And that Obama intervened to block legislation that would have imposed modest restrictions on the pay of bank executives, while insisting that government loans to General Motors and Chrysler be made contingent on a 50 percent wage cut for newly hired auto workers.In its staggering dishonesty, the administration’s public relations campaign on the economy is strikingly similar to its effort during the BP Gulf catastrophe to appear “tough,” even as every step it took had as its overriding concern the protection of oil giant’s profits. Last spring Obama staged a visit to the Gulf, followed by a White House meeting with BP executives and a prime-time press conference to present the $20 billion cleanup fund—set up according to BP’s requirements—as a great boon to workers and small businesses victimized by the company’s negligence and criminality.Similarly, the White House has stage-managed a series of events this week to package another bonanza for the corporate-financial elite as a lifeline to the “middle class.”Yet even as Obama attempts to pose as an advocate of jobs and the middle class, the White House has been at pains to refute any notion that the latest proposals constitute a “stimulus,” or that they will significantly add to the deficit.“I am absolutely committed to fiscal responsibility, which is why I’ve already proposed freezing all discretionary spending unrelated to national security for the next three years,” Obama declared, referring to his long-term budget plan dubbed “A New Era of Responsibility.”The speech was two-faced throughout. Appealing to elderly voters, he promised to fight “the efforts of some in the other party to privatize Social Security, because as long as I’m president, no one is going to take the retirement savings of a generation of Americans and hand it over to Wall Street.”But minutes later, Obama signaled to the ruling class that he was preparing, after the elections, to impose harsh cuts in basic entitlement programs such as Medicare and Social Security. “[O]nce the bipartisan fiscal commission finishes its work,” Obama said, “I will spend the next year making the tough choices necessary to further reduce our deficit and lower our debt.”Obama was referring to his National Commission on Fiscal Responsibility and Reform, which in December—one month after the elections—is expected to propose a series of “reforms” of Social Security, including reductions in benefits, an increase in the retirement age, and the introduction of private “add-on retirement accounts.” (See “US ruling class prepares attack on Social Security”)Obama is playing his role in a carefully orchestrated political act. The media incessantly claim that the primary concern animating voters is their fear of “deficit spending,” and that businesses have frozen hiring due to excessive government intervention from the Obama administration. This is counterposed to the Republicans’ central policy goal—the extension of tax breaks for the extremely wealthy and the rejection of any form of assistance to the vast majority of the population.In reality, both the Democrats and Republicans are committed to making the population foot the full bill for the economic crisis, the bailout of Wall Street, and the cost of the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.*